the beauty of whats missing
by mrs cerberus
Summary: Axel was quiet for a while, and when he finally spoke, Namine took his 'I'm Sorry' to mean that he understood. AxelxNamine then AxelxRoxas; Namine gives Axel a lesson in art.
1. landscape

**disclaimer:** don't own anything. this is for jen, sending plot bunnies into my head (somehow).

* * *

Really, he was just like her. At first she thought he was like the others, who all exemplified the meaning of 'heartless' with acts of cruelty and betrayal amongst them. Soon she started to realize that he didn't really want to be here either, that he too was just a pawn in bigger plans. 

Sometimes, Marluxia would leave him in charge of the watch, leaving them alone for hours on end. At first, they'd just sit silently in the room, her immersed in her drawings and him in his musings. Then, one day, he actually spoke to her.

"I feel empty, Namine," Axel said, sitting at the chair across the room. Looking up from her sketchbook, she met his eyes, a look of thought on her face. "I've tried... But I can't adjust to this." He tapped his chest, right where his heart should be.

"It depends on how you look at it," she said softly after a moment of hesitation.

"What do you mean?"

"Well..." she said, folding the book closed in her lap and shifting on her seat to sit straight up. Little things like this made you want to trust her. Right now it was the childish way she would mock a teacher giving a lecture. "If you think of it like that, as something missing from the bigger picture, then you are missing something."

"But that's all we are, aren't we?" Scratching his head, he scrunched his face up in thought. "We're just leftovers."

"See, you just need to be optimistic." Sighing, she smiled at him. "We're not something taken away from the bigger picture, we're small pieces that compose it. In a landscape painting, the artist will always leave an open space, because it gives the eyes a place to rest. Otherwise it gets too complicated."

"Too... complicated?" Blinking, he waited for her to continue.

"Yes. You see, if you fill in every space of the page, you don't know where to look first. But with us, we just have an empty space for people to appreciate the rest of us. A heart itself can be complicated, mixed up in the morals of right and wrong. If you can see past that, you'll find there is so much more to the work."

He seemed to mull it over in his head for a moment, looking away from her. "Is that how you've gotten used to it?"

"Yes," she said, not moving in her chair, eyes still fixed on him. "Sometimes, everything is too much to take in, but I can look around and find that blind spot, and it helps me to relax. I can put whatever I want there. There is an empty space in my chest I've decorated on my own, and it's comfortable for me."

Axel was quiet for a while, and when he finally spoke, Namine took his 'I'm Sorry' to mean that he understood.


	2. pictures of you

It wasn't true love. Nobodies couldn't love. So why did it make sense? 

Because it wasn't even really love.

In the world, there were many different types of art. Portraits, sculptures, abstracts. After he talked to Namine, he still didn't fully understand what she had meant. A landscape painting leaves an open space to rest the eyes, a space of nothing.

One day, it all made sense. He met the boy that would teach him his place in the world, showing him how he could fit in.

Roxas was a landscape painting in himself, and after Axel met him he started to understand.

Without a heart, Roxas couldn't show envy, love, wrath, pride. These things often ruined the best of people, who always threw their chests forward and held their noses up.

Without those aspects, Axel started to truly appreciate Roxas for who he was. There was nothing there to make him stick his chest out, and his nose was always level which allowed for Axel to look into his eyes, to see the rest of him.

People usually look to someones heart first, but the bond they shared was above all these messy, human traits. They didn't _feel _attached, they just _were_. It wasn't love, it wasn't hate, it wasn't anything. They rested in the blank canvas together, for a while, until Roxas left.

Namine had taught him to decorate, fill in and make the gap his own, and there was a hole in his heart where he could comfortably fit Roxas. All the words he never got to say, he never needed to. They all fit into the blank portion of the painting, and the rest was worth a thousand words.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Totally got inspired to add another chapter to this. Didn't think I would, but there you have it. Jen, I need to stop sleeping on our conversations, haha. Or do I? Remember kids, don't own a thing. Axel and Roxas should always be paired as FRIENDSHIP. -is shot- 


End file.
